


Death Is Relative

by CheetahLeopard2



Series: Gifts and also what I'm doing instead of working on my others [56]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Connect Zine, M/M, Multi, Mutants, Reincarnation, super powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-25 03:23:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16653337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CheetahLeopard2/pseuds/CheetahLeopard2
Summary: He wonders what it's like to be so weak that the wind, gentle as it is in the moment, can rip you from your reality.Satori has powers, falls in love w Eita etc.





	Death Is Relative

**Author's Note:**

> This was for the ConnectZine back in May!!!!!

Tendou Satori was young when he was first given a clue as to what he is.

He’s not so young that he doesn’t understand what paramedics shaking their heads and assistants covering whispering mouths means.

But he is too young to connect it with the “He should be dead.” and the begging of his parents not to take him to the hospital.

\---

 

_ “Satori! Jump!” it’s a simple dare. Too simple. But the connotations are anything but.  _

_ Satori, confident in his youth, thinks nothing of it as he crests the top of the hill, walking towards his fate. _

After all, most everyone can fly, even if only once.

_ He savors the moment, his echoing exclamation of agreement fading away. _

_ There’s a light breeze today, and it brushes gently past his cheek when he turns his head back to survey the children gathered behind him in a semicircle. _

_ They all think him a monster, and so he would prove them right. He would fly his turn, and then dare them the worst thing of all, to confess the truth of their worst betrayal.  _

_ Satori takes his moment to observe the land around him, the rippling grass, the dandelion seeds being torn away by the breeze. He wonders what it’s like to be so weak that the wind, gentle as it is at the moment, can rip you from your reality.  _

_ And then, turning fully to look at the children. Those children who teased him and jeered before dragging him around claiming to be his friends, he lets his head weigh more than his feet, and back he falls. _

_ The fall is fine, boring at first, so he turns to face the sea face first. _

_ As he falls spread eagle Satori feels his back muscles twitch, as though read to extend his wings. _

_ And Satori flies. Just the once. _

_ The wind is no longer gentle, whipping his bangs against his eyes and stinging his bare arms. _

_ Satori loves it. Lives for the rush, the sting, the weightlessness of freefall. _

_ But it’s over all too soon. He should have plunged into the sea, slapped but alive in a sea of bubbles. _

_ If only. _

_ Instead what greets him is the jarring earth, rocks slicing into his tender skin first, brambles slashing through his neck and eyes, before his back is jarred upwards and arches beautifully for a moment before it falls, shattered at the center although Satori had believed bones to be stronger than diamonds. _

He’s not meant to wake up.

\---

 

Tendou Satori is young and naive in a society where mortality is a given. Taken for granted even, exploited by those who know what to do.

Of course, that didn’t mean that there weren’t a few chosen ones. The ones the government loved to label as unwanted, broken, future-dooming, talent-wielding.

_ If only they were wrong. _

But really, they brought all they labeled upon themselves.

 Naive, young, and twice-lived-once-dead.

His parents were no fools, they knew what this meant. 

Anything remotely dangerous must be purged from Satori’s life, lest he injure himself and spill his secret in blood receding from the world back to his veins.

_ Someday he will understand _ .

 

\---

High school.

For the 15 years of his life leading up to his enrollment, he has hidden his immortality. His never ending secret.

He walks into his dorm and his heart seems to forget it can’t stop.

There stands a man, the most beautiful Satori has ever seen. His perfect lips are folded into a scowl as he unloads boxes. His hair is an ashen grey, the same color as the clouds dotting the sky all those years ago, when Satori could find himself in freefall.

And when the man speaks, his voice sends Satori back to those few minutes, the rush, the breathlessness, the  _ fun _ . 

And Satori decides he wouldn’t mind spending every day listening to that voice as it gets breathier when scolding him.

Because he and Eita are going to be best friends.

\---

 

The woods, the grassland, the outside. An ever-present escape for Satori.

The wind since that day has always felt like it was teasing him, so weak when Satori knows it can be so strong.

Today, however, the wind seems to be gaining momentum, biting cold wherever Satori’s skin is bare. 

_ Biting at the tear tracks down his face _ .

He had run. His lips had met the pair of the one he held most dear and so he had run. 

He had jumped from a window never minding who saw him and ran directly to the woods that guard the back of the school.

_ And Eita, well, Eita ran after him, because love does crazy things. _

\---

 

Reconciled, the pair grew ever closer. One step at a time, two, three, four, until their relationship took leaps and bounds-

And then settled, settled like their hearts did, yearning for only one person.

But every peace can be disrupted.

\---

 

The news came late one night with a bottle of wine, champagne to celebrate the rings gracing their fingers. A tsunami, one like nothing the people of the time had ever seen.

A wildfire, that water only fuels.

Pets going berserk and attacking everything.

Talent-wielders, bearing with them the torch of an apocalypse.

\---

 

They run.

They go inland, Satori shielding Eita every step of the way.

Until one day, they run out of time.

A plague. 

 

Satori catches the airborne disaster first, starting with a simple cough and collapsing convulsing until death tries to catch up with him and he stands better than new, only to hear the most gruff of coughs from his companion.

_ And his heart doesn’t remember it can’t stop as Eita’s breath rattles weakly one last time. _

 

And then his immortality means goodbye.

 

\---

Satori doesn’t cry, shock setting in before reality. The rest of that day doesn’t just fade into night but also into obscurity, his only memories flashes of tirelessly digging with his hands. Deep enough no scavenger would ever find Eita, decorated with white flowers found growing out in cracks between rocks. 

Satori, looking back, isn’t sure how long he cried over that grave. Long enough for the flowers to wilt and for him to die a first time from dehydration and nearly a second of starvation.  

It was a place that took his love from him, but it was also the last reminder Satori had of him.

Leaving may be the hardest thing he’s ever done.

 

\---

 

The years begin to blur together, deaths too numerous for Satori to count.

A month spent staring sadly at a patch of white flowers, another month with a new attempt every day, another reminder, another sign.

Another day without the life robbed from him.

The life of “Welcome home”s and stolen kisses and breathless laughs and-

It’s time to face reality again.

\---

The Shiratorizawa grounds are more overgrown than Satori remembers.  Both with people and plants.

Plants are easier to live with than people.

No one sticks around when an unkillable sorrowed force is actively fighting to get everyone out.

He tells himself he wants it this way, rolls up his tattered sleeves and gets to work.

He makes it work.

 

\---

His and Eita’s dorm remained untouched until the loneliness becomes too much.

_ If you pray to someone’s soul _ , Satori wonders,  _ can you make them your god? _

 

\---

 

Someone is here. 

Satori knows because as soon as they arrive the spirits scattered across the grounds, most not talent bearers, rise.

And at the sight, as does a quivering sprout of hope in Satori’s heart.

 

\---

 

His name is Wakatoshi, Satori finds out. Reaching far back in his mind to use a language almost forgotten, struggling to get words past vocal cords only barely not withered from disuse because of his renewed life. 

Wakatoshi is not old enough to know a time before calamity, about 25 now (so much time has passed, how much time has Satori lived without him? How much longer?). He has come from an ever-growing community where Satori remembers Karasuno being.

Wakatoshi can reanimate spirits, but further than that, he can resurrect them.

The hope in Satori’s chest flowers.

As does, in their journey north, a feeling Satori had almost forgotten.

 

Satori isn’t sure. Is this how it feels to betray someone? How it feels when one’s heart betrays them?

His one love is gone.

He thought these feelings were gone forever.

And yet-

A stirring of  _ something _ , for his traveling companion. As they travel to resurrect the one whose heart he belongs to and who owns his.

These feelings don’t own him. He has wallowed in his sadness long enough for budding love to be something easily ignored.

\---

 

They can’t find him. There is the grave, marked by a slab of rock long bleached white by the sun, flowers long since turned to dust.

But Eita is missing.

And Satori’s hope, bloomed so brilliantly in their journey, withers and dies like his body refuses to do when he wants nothing more.

He turns back to Wakatoshi, to thank him, to apologize, to confess-

And finds him standing stock still, a dagger from a trap long ago set hilt-deep in the broad expanse of his chest.

With his last breath, a smile, a thanks.

And then the mist of his soul splits in two.

A past life. The life of Satori’s first love.

 

And then Satori’s immortality once more means- will always mean- goodbye.

But Satori will never again fare well.

**Author's Note:**

> PLEASE PLEASE COMMENT


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